First of all, not to be superficial, but just look at that photograph
on the Telegraph website. The traditional nun’s veil and habit; the
radiant smile; the hand raised in cheery, confident and sincere
greeting; the stunning lady-of-a-certain-age good looks: Mother Antonia
comes over as a magnetic personality, the sort of person you meet once,
and whom you never forget. She ticks the same boxes as the late Blessed
John Paul II.

Then there is the life story. It was all very ordinary for much of
her life. Growing up in the Great Depression, the good times that come
from prosperity, the two marriages, the eight children, the mink coats,
the ballgowns – pretty average for life in Beverley Hills, or so I
imagine. And the Catholicism, and the charity work, and then the
extraordinary decision at the age of fifty or so to go and devote
herself entirely to the inmates of a Tijuana prison. But that is the
wonderful thing about Catholicism: it enables the most ordinary people
to do the most extraordinary things.

The Daily Telegraph describes the prison she worked in, with its
customary understatement, as “a notorious hellhole”. In fact there are
no words to describe the depravity of Mexico’s criminal class. Their
evil behaviour is, even in this world of ours, jaw-dropping: I have just
been reading the latest chronicle of Mexico’s drug wars, entitled Narcoland, by Anabel Hernandez.
The criminals of Tijuana are beyond redemption. So, what did Mother
Antonia do? Did she wring her hands and say how ghastly it all was? No,
she did not.

Instead, the obituary tells us: “[She] transformed the atmosphere.
Armed with a Bible, a Spanish dictionary and her own unassailable moral
authority, she waded into riots and gun battles; shamed prison
authorities into improving conditions and brought human rights
violations to the attention of newspapers. She persuaded doctors and
dentists to hold free clinics, got local bakers to donate bread to
supplement the meagre prison rations, rescued lavatories from junk yards
and insisted on their being installed, prayed with prisoners and guards
and got to know their families. She taught offenders to acknowledge
they had done wrong, and many would later testify that her example had
persuaded them to mend their ways.”

Two things leap out of that account – her own unassailable moral
authority, and the idea that there is a moral order: she taught
offenders to acknowledge they had done wrong. A combination of the two
made for success: an old recipe, please note, but one that makes
complete sense even today.

Mother Antonia was clearly a leader, just like religious founders of
old. The bishop who first encouraged her was Juan Jesus Posadas. He
later became Cardinal Archbishop of Guadalajara. In 1993 he was
murdered, cut down by a hail of bullets in the airport carpark. The
responsibility for this lies with the drug cartels, or so the official
version has it. Anabel Hernandez thinks otherwise.

Meanwhile, as I sit here writing this, all over the world, people are
sitting around crticising the Catholic Church and blaming it for many
of the world’s ills. To those people, my message is simple. Mother
Antonia, from her place in heaven, is now praying for you. Watch out!

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